Now we want to see how the believers, by being conformed to the death of Christ, experience and enjoy the dispensing of the Divine Trinity in the divine transformation for the divine conformation.
Philippians 3:10 speaks of being conformed to the death of Christ, indicating that we must take Christ’s death as the mold for our living. The mold of Christ’s death refers to Christ’s putting His human life to death continuously so that He might live by His divine life. Today Christ’s death is a mold, and we are being conformed to the shape of this mold. When our human living is conformed to the shape of this mold, we are dead to our human life yet live God’s life.
Unless we are conformed to Christ’s death, we cannot be conformed to the image of Christ. Christ’s death is the mold in which we are being conformed to His image, the image of the firstborn Son of God. As we experience the process of transformation and conformation, we are being conformed to the death of Christ.
The death of Christ was present in Him throughout His whole life. As He was living, He was also dying. Every day He was being molded by the cross, even when He was a child living in the home of a carpenter in Nazareth. He was continuously being crossed out by His mother, by His brothers, and by His disciples. When He told His disciples that He would suffer and be crucified, they had no ears to hear. Day after day Christ died to the old creation so that He might live in the new creation.
Being conformed to Christ’s death should be our daily experience as believers. The more our natural life is put to death, the more the divine life in us will be released. Then in our experience we will be conformed to Christ’s death.
In Matthew 16:24 the Lord Jesus said, “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” The cross is not merely a suffering; it is primarily a killing. It kills and terminates the criminal. Christ bore the cross and then was crucified. As He was bearing the cross, He was under a killing rather than a suffering. The believers in Christ are crucified with Him and then bear the cross. Bearing the cross means to remain in the killing of the death of Christ for the terminating of our self, natural life, and old man.
Many Christians have a mistaken concept of the cross, thinking that the cross is related to suffering. Associating the cross merely to suffering, however, is wrong. In Matthew 16:24 the cross does not denote suffering but killing. The ultimate purpose of the cross is not to make us suffer; it is to terminate us, to kill us. The Lord’s word does not include the concept of suffering but rather of killing.
To bear the cross means to remain on the cross. All who have experienced the cross agree that one who bears the cross cannot be separated from the cross. A person who bears the cross is one with the cross; he cannot be separated from the cross.
For us to bear the cross, we must realize that we have already been crucified. We have been crucified together with Christ on the cross; our own life, the natural life, the old man, and our entire being have been killed. Now we must remain under the killing. This is the meaning of bearing the cross.